Cavitation recognition of axial piston pumps in noisy environment based on Grad-CAM visualization technique

The cavitation in axial piston pumps threatens the reliability and safety of the overall hydraulic system.Vibration signal can reflect the cavitation conditions in axial piston pumps and it has been combined with machine learning to detect the pump cavitation.However,the vibration signal usually contains noise in real working conditions,which raises concerns about accurate recognition of cavitation in noisy environment.This paper presents an intelligent method to recognise the cavitation in axial piston pumps in noisy environment.First,we train a convolutional neural network(CNN)using the spectrogram images transformed from raw vibration data under different cavitation conditions.Second,we employ the technique of gradient-weighted class activation mapping(Grad-CAM)to visualise class-discriminative regions in the spectrogram image.Finally,we propose a novel image processing method based on Grad-CAM heatmap to automatically remove entrained noise and enhance class features in the spectrogram image.The experimental results show that the proposed method greatly improves the diagnostic performance of the CNN model in noisy environments.The classification accuracy of cavitation conditions increases from 0.50 to 0.89 and from 0.80 to 0.92 at signal-to-noise ratios of 4 and 6 dB,respectively.

Influence of Piston Number on Churning Losses in Axial Piston Pumps

Raising the rotational speed of an axial piston pump is useful for improving its power density;however,the churning losses of the piston increase significantly with increasing speed,and this reduces the performance and efficiency of the axial piston pump.Currently,there has been some research on the churning losses of pistons;however,it has rarely been analyzed from the perspective of the piston number.To improve the performance and efficiency of the axial piston pump,a computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulation model of the churning loss was established,and the effect of piston number on the churning loss was studied in detail.The simulation analysis results revealed that the churning losses initially increased as the number of pistons increased;however,when the number of pistons increased from six to nine,the torque of the churning losses decreased because of the hydrodynamic shadowing effect.In addition,in the analysis of cavitation results,it was determined that the cavitation area of the axial piston pump was mainly concentrated around the piston,and the cavitation became increasingly severe as the speed increased.By comparing the simulation results with and without the cavitation model,it was observed that the cavitation phenomenon is beneficial for the reduction of churning losses.In this study,a piston churning loss test rig that can eliminate other friction losses was established to verify the accuracy of the simulation results.A comparative analysis indicated that the simulation results were consistent with the actual situation.In addition,this study also conducted a simulation study on seven and nine piston pumps with the same displacement.The simulation results revealed that churning losses of the seven pistons were generally greater than those of the nine pistons under the same displacement.In addition,regarding the same piston number and displacement,reducing the pitch circle radius of piston bores is effective in reducing the churning loss.This research analyzes the effect of piston number on the churning loss,which has certain guiding significance for the structural design and model selection of axial piston pumps.

Experimental Research on the Dynamic Lubricating Performance of Slipper/Swash Plate Interface in Axial Piston Pumps

The interface between the slipper/swash plate is one of the most important frication pairs in axial piston pumps.The test of this interface in a real pump is very challenging.In this paper,a novel pump prototype is designed and a test rig is set up to study the dynamic lubricating performance of the slipper/swash-plate interface in axial piston machines.Such an experimental setup can simulate the operating condition of a real axial piston pump without changing the relative motion relationship of the interfaces.Considering the lubricant oil film thickness as the main measurement parameter,the attitude of the slipper under the conditions of different load pressure,rotation speed and charge pressure are studied experimentally.After the test,the wear state of the swash plate is observed.According to the friction trace on the surface of the swash plate,the prediction for the attitude of the slipper and the zone easy to wear are verified.

Raising the Speed Limit of Axial Piston Pumps by Optimizing the Suction Duct

The maximum delivery pressure and the maximum rotational speed determine the power density of axial piston pumps.However,increasing the speed beyond the limit always accompanies cavitation,leading to the decrease of the volumetric efficiency.The pressure loss in the suction duct is considered a significant reason for the cavitation.Therefore,this paper proposes a methodology to optimize the shape of the suction duct aiming at reducing the intensity of cavitation and increasing the speed limit.At first,a computational fluid dynamics(CFD)model based on the full cavitation model(FCM)is developed to simulate the fluid field of the axial piston pump and a test rig is set to validate the model.Then the topology optimization is conducted for obtaining the minimum pressure loss in the suc-tion duct.Comparing the original suction duct with the optimized one in the simulation model,the pressure loss in the suction duct gets considerable reduction,which eases the cavitation intensity a lot.The simulation results prove that the speed limit can increase under several different inlet pressures.

Review of cylinder block/valve plate interface in axial piston pumps: Theoretical models,experimental investigations, and optimal design

Axial piston pumps have been widely used in aircraft hydraulic systems to supply the system with pressurized fluid. The continuous improvement of the aircraft performance has put forward the demand on aviation piston pumps for high power density, safety, and reliability. The lubricating interfaces in axial piston machines are the key design issue that greatly determines the pump performance and service life. The cylinder block/valve plate interface is one of these critical lubricating interfaces and has received considerable attention from many researchers in the last half century. This study aims to review the state-of-the-art literature on the cylinder block/valve plate interface comprehensively and systematically. First, we introduce various theoretical models developed to investigate the lubrication behaviors of the interface and compare them in terms of their assumptions and limitations. Second, the experimental studies on the cylinder block/valve plate interface are presented comprehensively, where the involved test rigs are divided into three types according to their fidelity levels and measurement functionality. Third, we summarize some typical approaches of structure optimization, surface shaping, and surface strengthening, which help improve the load-carrying and anti-wear capacities of the interface under severe operating conditions. Finally, the challenges and future trends of the cylinder block/valve plate interface research are discussed briefly.

An adaptive-order particle filter for remaining useful life prediction of aviation piston pumps

An accurate estimation of the remaining useful life（RUL） not only contributes to an effective application of an aviation piston pump, but also meets the necessity of condition based maintenance（CBM）. For the current RUL evaluation methods, a model-based method is inappropriate for the degradation process of an aviation piston pump due to difficulties of modeling, while a data-based method rarely presents high-accuracy prediction in a long period of time. In this work,an adaptive-order particle filter（AOPF） prognostic process is proposed aiming at improving long-term prediction accuracy of RUL by combining both kinds of methods. A dynamic model is initialized by a data-driven or empirical method. When a new observation comes, the prior state distribution is approximated by a current model. The order of the current model is updated adaptively by fusing the information of the observation. Monte Carlo simulation is employed for estimating the posterior probability density function of future states of the pump＇s degradation.With updating the order number adaptively, the method presents a higher precision in contrast with those of traditional methods. In a case study, the proposed AOPF method is adopted to forecast the degradation status of an aviation piston pump with experimental return oil flow data, and the analytical results show the effectiveness of the proposed AOPF method.

Fault diagnosis of axial piston pumps with multi-sensor data and convolutional neural network

Axial piston pumps have wide applications in hydraulic systems for power transmission.Their condition monitoring and fault diagnosis are essential in ensuring the safety and reliability of the entire hydraulic system.Vibration and discharge pressure signals are two common signals used for the fault diagnosis of axial piston pumps because of their sensitivity to pump health conditions.However,most of the previous fault diagnosis methods only used vibration or pressure signal,and literatures related to multi-sensor data fusion for the pump fault diagnosis are limited.This paper presents an end-to-end multi-sensor data fusion method for the fault diagnosis of axial piston pumps.The vibration and pressure signals under different pump health conditions are fused into RGB images and then recognized by a convolutional neural network.Experiments were performed on an axial piston pump to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.Results show that the proposed multi-sensor data fusion method greatly improves the fault diagnosis of axial piston pumps in terms of accuracy and robustness and has better diagnostic performance than other existing diagnosis methods.

Adaptive decision-level fusion strategy for the fault diagnosis of axial piston pumps using multiple channels of vibration signals

An axial piston pump is a key component that plays the role of the "heart" in hydraulic systems. The pump failure will lead to an unexpected breakdown of the entire hydraulic system or even economic loss and catastrophic safety consequences. Several vibration-based machine learning methods have been developed to detect and diagnose faults of axial piston pumps. However,most of these intelligent diagnosis methods use single-sensor vibration data to monitor the pump health states. Additionally, the diagnostic accuracy is unacceptable in most situations due to the complex pump structure and limited sensor information.Therefore, this study proposes a multi-sensor fusion method to improve the fault diagnosis performance of axial piston pumps.The convolutional neural network receives three channels of vibration data and makes the final diagnosis through information fusion at the decision level. The proposed decision fusion method is evaluated on the classification task of leakage levels of an actual axial piston pump. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the classification accuracy by adjusting the probability distribution of classification according to the learned weight matrix.

Integrated slipper retainer mechanism to eliminate slipper wear in high-speed axial piston pumps

he power density of axial piston pumps can greatly benefit from increasing the speed level.However,traditional slippers in axial piston pumps are exposed to continuous sliding on the swash plate,suffering from serious wear at high rotational speeds.Therefore,this paper presents a new integrated slipper retainer mechanism for high-speed axial piston pumps,which can avoid direct contact between the slippers and the swash plate and thereby eliminate slipper wear under severe operating conditions.A lubrication model was developed for this specific slipper retainer mechanism,and experiments were carried out on a pump prototype operating at high rotational speed up to 10000 r/min.Experimental results qualitatively validated the theoretical model and confirmed the effectiveness of the new slipper design.

Development of an analytical model to estimate the churning losses in high-speed axial piston pumps

The axial piston pumps in aerospace applications are often characterized by high-speed rotation to achieve great power density. However, their internal rotating parts are fully immersed in the casing oil during operation, leading to considerable churning losses (more than 10% of total power losses) at high rotational speeds. The churning losses deserve much attention at the design stage of high-speed axial piston pumps, but accurate analytical models are not available to estimate the drag torque associated with the churning losses. In this paper, we derive the analytical expressions of the drag torque acting on the key rotating parts immersed in oil, including the cylinder block and the multiple pistons in a circular array. The calculated drag torque agrees well with the experimental data over a wide range of rotational speeds from 1500 to 12000 r/min. The presented analytical model provides practical guidelines for reducing the churning losses in high-speed axial piston pumps or motors.

Investigation on the Radial Micro-motion about Piston of Axial Piston Pump

The limit working parameters and service life of axial piston pump are determined by the carrying ability and lubrication characteristic of its key friction pairs. Therefore, the design and optimization of the key friction pairs are always a key and difficult problem in the research on axial piston pump. In the traditional research on piston/cylinder pair, the assembly relationship of piston and cylinder bore is simplified into ideal cylindrical pair, which can not be used to analyze the influences of radial micro-motion of piston on the distribution characteristics of oil-film thickness and pressure in details. In this paper, based on the lubrication theory of the oil film, a numerical simulation model is built, taking the influences of roughness, elastic deformation of piston and pressure-viscosity effect into consideration. With the simulation model, the dynamic characteristics of the radial micro-motion and pressure distribution are analyzed, and the relationships between radial micro-motion and carrying ability, lubrication condition, and abrasion are discussed. Furthermore, a model pump for pressure distribution measurement of oil film between piston and cylinder bore is designed. The comparison of simulation and experimental results of pressure distribution shows that the simulation model has high accuracy. The experiment and simulation results demonstrate that the pressure distribution has peak values that are much higher than the boundary pressure in the piston chamber due to the radial micro-motion, and the abrasion of piston takes place mainly on the hand close to piston ball. In addition, improvement of manufacturing roundness and straightness of piston and cylinder bore is helpful to improve the carrying ability of piston/cylinder pair. The proposed research provides references for designing piston/cylinder pair, and helps to prolong the service life of axial piston pump.

Noise Reduction of an Axial Piston Pump by Valve Plate Optimization

Current researches mainly focus on the investigations of the valve plate utilizing pressure relief grooves. However,air?release and cavitation can occur near the grooves. The valve plate utilizing damping holes show excellent perfor?mance in avoiding air?release and cavitation. This study aims to reduce the noise emitted from an axial piston pump using a novel valve plate utilizing damping holes. A dynamic pump model is developed,in which the fluid properties are carefully modeled to capture the phenomena of air release and cavitation. The causes of di erent noise sources are investigated using the model. A comprehensive parametric analysis is conducted to enhance the understanding of the e ects of the valve plate parameters on the noise sources. A multi?objective genetic algorithm optimization method is proposed to optimize the parameters of valve plate. The amplitudes of the swash plate moment and flow rates in the inlet and outlet ports are defined as the objective functions. The pressure overshoot and undershoot in the piston chamber are limited by properly constraining the highest and lowest pressure values. A comparison of the various noise sources between the original and optimized designs over a wide range of pressure levels shows that the noise sources are reduced at high pressures. The results of the sound pressure level measurements show that the optimized valve plate reduces the noise level by 1.6 d B(A) at the rated working condition. The proposed method is e ective in reducing the noise of axial piston pumps and contributes to the development of quieter axial piston machines.

Thermal-hydraulic Modeling and Simulation of Piston Pump

This paper presents a kind of modeling approach to the study of the thermal-hydraulic piston pump which is used in the airplane comprehensively. A set of lumped parameter mathematical models are developed which are based on conservation of energy. Heat transfer analysis for the piston pump is also given in the paper in which the heat flow inside the piston pump is described precisely. The theoretical basis and modeling stratagy are applied in a typical thermal-hydraulic circuit containing the piston pump. Simulation results are presented which show a comparison of model/rig performance and the agreement obtained demonstrates the validity of the modeling approach.

Modeling and Simulation on Axial Piston Pump Based on Virtual Prototype Technology

A particular emphasis is placed on the virtual prototype technology （VPT） of axial piston pump. With this technology it is convenient and flexible to build a complicated 3D virtual based on real physical model. The actual kinematics pairs of the parts were added on the model. The fluid characters were calculated by hydraulic software. The shape of the parts, the flexible body of parts, etc were improved in this prototype. So the virtual prototype of piston pump can work in computer like a real piston pump, and the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, stress of parts, etc can be investigated. The development of the VPT is introduced at the beginning, and the modeling process of the virtual prototype is explained. Then a special emphasis is laid on the relationship between the dynamics model and the hydraulic model, and the simulations on the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, the stress and strain distribution of the middle shaft and piston are operated. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the VPT are discussed. The improved virtual prototype of piston pump more tally with the real situation and the VPT has a great potential in simulation on hydraulic components.

Pre-Compression Volume on Flow Ripple Reduction of a Piston Pump

Axial piston pump with pre-compression volume（PCV） has lower flow ripple in large scale of operating condition than the traditional one. However, there is lack of precise simulation model of the axial piston pump with PCV, so the parameters of PCV are difticult to be determined. A finite element simulation model for piston pump with PCV is built by considering the piston movement, the fluid characteristic（including fluid compressibility and viscosity） and the leakage flow rate. Then a test of the pump flow ripple called the secondary source method is implemented to validate the simulation model. Thirdly, by comparing results among the simulation results, test results and results from other publications at the same operating condition, the simulation model is validated and used in optimizing the axial piston pump with PCV. According to the pump flow ripples obtained by the simulation model with different PCV parameters, the flow ripple is the smallest when the PCV angle is 13~, the PCV volume is 1.3 ~ I0-4 m3 at such operating condition that the pump suction pressure is 2 MPa, the pump delivery pressure 15 MPa, the pump speed 1 000 r/min, the swash plate angle 13~. At the same time, the flow ripple can be reduced when the pump suction pressure is 2 MPa, the pump delivery pressure is 5 MPa,15 MPa, 22 MPa, pump speed is 400 r/min, 1 000 r/rain, 1 500 r/rain, the swash plate angle is ll~, 13~, 15~ and 17~, respectively. The finite element simulation model proposed provides a method for optimizing the PCV structure and guiding for designing a quieter axial piston pump.

Impact of Typical Steady-state Conditions and Transient Conditions on Flow Ripple and Its Test Accuracy for Axial Piston Pump

The current research about the flow ripple of axial piston pump mainly focuses on the effect of the structure of parts on the flow ripple. Therein, the structure of parts are usually designed and optimized at rated working conditions. However, the pump usually has to work in large-scale and time-variant working conditions. Therefore, the flow ripple characteristics of pump and analysis for its test accuracy with respect to variant steady-state conditions and transient conditions in a wide range of operating parameters are focused in this paper. First, a simulation model has been constructed, which takes the kinematics of oil film within friction pairs into account for higher accuracy. Afterwards, a test bed which adopts Secondary Source Method is built to verify the model. The simulation and tests results show that the angular position of the piston, corresponding to the position where the peak flow ripple is produced, varies with the different pressure. The pulsating amplitude and pulsation rate of flow ripple increase with the rise of pressure and the variation rate of pressure. For the pump working at a constant speed, the flow pulsation rate decreases dramatically with the increasing speed when the speed is less than 27.78% of the maximum speed, subsequently presents a small decrease tendency with the speed further increasing. With the rise of the variation rate of speed, the pulsating amplitude and pulsation rate of flow ripple increase. As the swash plate angle augments, the pulsating amplitude of flow ripple increases, nevertheless the flow pulsation rate decreases. In contrast with the effect of the variation of pressure, the test accuracy of flow ripple is more sensitive to the variation of speed. It makes the test accuracy above 96.20% available for the pulsating amplitude of pressure deviating within a range of ~6% from the mean pressure. However, with a variation of speed deviating within a range of ±2% from the mean speed, the attainable test accuracy of flow ripple is above 93.07%. The model constructed in this research proposes a method to determine the flow ripple characteristics of pump and its attainable test accuracy under the large-scale and time-variant working conditions. Meanwhile, a discussion about the variation of flow ripple and its obtainable test accuracy with the conditions of the pump working in wide operating ranges is given as well.

Flow Ripple of Axial Piston Pump with Computational Fluid Dynamic Simulation Using Compressible Hydraulic Oil

The flow ripple, which is the source of noise in an axial piston pump, is widely studied today with the computational fluid dynamic（CFD） technology development. In the traditional CFD modeling, the fluid compressibility, which strongly influences the accuracy of the flow ripple simulation results, is often neglected. So a compressible sub-model was added with user defined function（UDF） in the CFD model to predict the flow ripple. At the same time, a test rig of flow ripple was built to study the validity of simulation. The flow ripple of pump was tested with different working parameters, including the rotation speed and the working pressure. The comparisons with experimental results show that the validity of the CFD model with compressible hydraulic oil is acceptable in analyzing the flow tipple characteristics. In this paper, the improved CFD model increases the accuracy of flow ripple rate to about one-magnitude order. Therefore, the compressible model of hydraulic oil is necessary in the flow ripple investigation of CFD simulation. The compressibility of hydraulic oil has significant effect on flow ripple, and the compression ripple takes about 88% of the total flow ripple of pump. Leakage ripple has the lowest proportion of about 4%, and geometrical ripple leakage ripple takes the remnant 8%. Besides, the influence of working parameters was investigated through the CFD simulations and experimental measurements. Comparison results show that the amplitude of flow ripple grows with the increasing of rotation speed and working pressure, and the flow ripple rate is independent of the rotation speed. However, flow ripple rate of piston pump grows with the increasing of working pressure, because the leakage ripple will increase with the pressure growing. The investigation on flow ripple of an axial piston pump using compressible hydraulic oil provides a more validity simulation model for the CFD analyzing and is beneficial to further understanding of the flow ripple characteristics in an axial piston pump.

Output Characteristics of a Series Three-port Axial Piston Pump

Driving a hydraulic cylinder directly by a closed-loop hydraulic pump is currently a key research area in the field of electro-hydraulic control technology,and it is the most direct means to improve the energy efficiency of an electro-hydraulic control system.So far,this technology has been well applied to the pump-controlled symmetric hydraulic cylinder.However,for the differential cylinder that is widely used in hydraulic technology,satisfactory results have not yet been achieved,due to the asymmetric flow constraint.Therefore,based on the principle of the asymmetric valve controlled asymmetric cylinder in valve controlled cylinder technology,an innovative idea for an asymmetric pump controlled asymmetric cylinder is put forward to address this problem.The scheme proposes to transform the oil suction window of the existing axial piston pump into two series windows.When in use,one window is connected to the rod chamber of the hydraulic cylinder and the other is linked with a low-pressure oil tank.This allows the differential cylinders to be directly controlled by changing the displacement or rotation speed of the pumps.Compared with the loop principle of offsetting the area difference of the differential cylinder through hydraulic valve using existing technology,this method may simplify the circuits and increase the energy efficiency of the system.With the software SimulationX,a hydraulic pump simulation model is set up,which examines the movement characteristics of an individual piston and the compressibility of oil,as well as the flow distribution area as it changes with the rotation angle.The pump structure parameters,especially the size of the unloading groove of the valve plate,are determined through digital simulation.All of the components of the series arranged three distribution-window axial piston pump are designed,based on the simulation analysis of the flow pulse characteristics of the pump,and then the prototype pump is made.The basic characteristics,such as the pressure,flow and noise of the pumps under different rotation speeds,are measured on the test bench.The test results verify the correctness of the principle.The proposed research lays a theoretical foundation for the further development of a new pump-controlled cylinder system.

Distribution characteristics and impact on pump＇s efficiency of hydro-mechanical losses of axial piston pump over wide operating ranges

A novel performance model of losses of pump was presented,which allows an explicit insight into the losses of various friction pairs of pump.The aim is to clarify that to what extent the hydro-mechanical losses affect efficiency,and to further gain an insight into the variation and distribution characteristics of hydro-mechanical losses over wide operating ranges.A good agreement is found in the comparisons between simulation and experimental results.At rated speed,the hydro-mechanical losses take a proportion ranging from 87% to 89% and from 68% to 97%,respectively,of the total power losses of pump working under 5 MPa pressure conditions,and 13% of full displacement conditions.Furthermore,within the variation of speed ranging from 48% to 100% of rated speed,and pressure ranging from 14% to 100% of rated pressure,the main sources of hydro-mechanical losses change to slipper swash plate pair and valve plate cylinder pair at low displacement conditions,from the piston cylinder pair and slipper swash plate pair at full displacement conditions.Besides,the hydro-mechanical losses in ball guide retainer pair are found to be almost independent of pressure.The derived conclusions clarify the main orientations of efforts to improve the efficiency performance of pump,and the proposed model can service for the design of pump with higher efficiency performance.

Parametric analysis of thermal effect on hydrostatic slipper bearing capacity of axial piston pump

Hydrostatic slipper was often used in friction bearing design, allowing improvement of the latter's dynamic behavior. The influence of thermal effect on hydrostatic slipper bearing capacity of axial piston pump was investigated. A set of lumped parameter mathematical models were developed based on energy conservation law of slipper/ swash plate pair. The results show that thermal equilibrium clearance due to solid thermal deformation periodically changes with shaft rotational angle. The slipper bearing capacity increases dramatically with decreasing thermal equilibrium clearance. In order to improve the slipper bearing capacity, length-to-diameter ratio of fixed damper varies from 3.5 to 8.75 and radius ratio of slipper varies from 1.5 to 2.0. In addition, the higher slipper thermal conductivity is useful to improve slipper bearing capability, but the thermal equilibrium clearance is not compromised.